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Last weekend, I had the chance to do some birdwatching in Subic.
Friends from Haribon and colleagues from Sri Lanka, India, Japan and
Singapore who were all part of the Asia Executive Committee of the
BirdLife Asia Council were with me. We were up at dawn, drove to
Hill 394 and waited for light. Somewhere in the dark, we heard a
nightjar (layakan or tahaw) calling. At the first glimpse of light,
it flew above us, our first bird sighting for the day. It was
probably the great eared nightjar which is common and is the largest
Philippine nightjar usually found in the forest and forest edge and
gives a very distinctive call. In a while we saw a Tarictic hornbill
(kalaw), solitary on top of a tree. This hornbill is the smallest
hornbill in the Philippines and is very noisy. They usually fly in
pairs or in small groups and it is really a joy to see them.
Although we all had binoculars, we enjoyed taking turns viewing the
bird up close through Kim Keang’s Swarovski spotting scope. Kim
Keang, a keen birder and naturalist from Singapore, was in the
Philippines for the first time and was only too eager to get lost in
the forest and discover the various natural surprises he could find.
As I write this, Kim Keang and his friend Jimmy Chiew, a
professional photographer and bird enthusiast, are in Sablayan,
Occidental Mindoro, hoping to find the endemic Mindoro bleeding
heart pigeon.
Farther on another tree, we saw several green
imperial pigeons (balud) which are commonly found throughout the
country. I find their iridescent green feathers very attractive. Two
hours into the trek, we heard many birds and were able to see about
20 different kinds including the Coleto (koleto), distinct for its
bald pink head, and the following endemics: several Philippine
bulbuls (palang-gang gubat), a white-eared brown dove (kurokuro)
feeding on a fig tree and a male Guiabero (batotok) which was so
inconspicuous as it was the same color as the leaves of the tree.
The following day, we enjoyed another morning of
observing birds just along the road where the Haribon staff house
is. We told our visitors that the birds got the memo we sent them,
thus, they all appeared! Kota from Sri Lanka and Asad from India are
also keen birders and were expert spotters. Again, we saw endemics
or species that can only be found in our country, which pleased our
visitors very much. One of them is the Rhabdornis which are very
active birds found in canopy and middle story of forests, forest
edge and second growth forests usually in groups. Another is the
Balicassiao, a bird with metallic black feathers. We were like
voyeurs keenly watching it groom itself by picking ants off a branch
and rubbing them into his feathers. We spotted a pair of Ashy
Minivets which are migrant and uncommon on top of a tree together
with several Blue-tailed Bee-eaters (parik-parik) with their very
colorful plumage. Bee-eaters are residents and fairly common and at
this time of the year, a colony of this bird can be found nesting on
an elevated portion of a garden in one houses in Cubi.
It is encouraging to know that the Tourism
Secretary Joseph Ace Durano has recently declared that birdwatching
will be promoted as a tourist product. The implication of this is
that there will now be an incentive to protect our remaining
forests. Globally, birdwatching is a multi-million dollar industry.
Birders around the world will only be too happy to come to the
Philippines and see for themselves the 195 endemic or unique bird
species, including the majestic and critically endangered Philippine
Eagle, our national bird.
I am not an expert birder nor was keenly
interested in it several years ago. But when I started observing
them with the help of binoculars, I couldn’t help but be amazed by
their beauty and by the different personalities they exhibit.
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